ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 95 
Reevutar Meetine, May 2, 1875. 
President and Vice-Presidents being absent, Dr. H. W. Hark- 
ness was called to the Chair. 
Sixty-two members present. 
Charles Wolcott Brooks read the following paper: 
Origin and Exclusive Development of the Chinese Race 
—Inquiry into the Evidence of their American Origin, 
suggesting a great Antiquity of the Human Races on 
the American Continent. 
BY CHARLES WOLCOTT BROOKS. 
In searching for the origin of any race, the careful student is led to the 
barrier of pre-historic ages, where, amid the scanty remnants of remote an- 
tiquity, he seeks the missing links of a chain whose farther end has passed 
from the vision of general observers. 
All ethnologists must recognize the importance of reviewing the early stages 
of religious belief current among any people, and laws governing its develop- 
ment, in any systematic study of their earliest origin. 
Every act cf man and every change in nature is self-recording, and although 
it may require the wisdom of a God to read the record, it yet exists, capable 
of being deciphered, and contributing to history. 
With the advance of scientific knowledge, the human line of division be- 
tween so-called historic and pre-historic ages is gradually receding. Science 
and historical criticism are opening many fields long hid in myth and con- 
jecture. Much now classed as ancient mythology is but the lingering rem- 
nants of very ancient history, preserved and distorted by tradition. Most 
ancient nations in their written histories, have aimed as far as possible to 
ignore all antecedent civilizations, claiming for their own deified ancestry the 
origin of all men. Barbaric conquerors, filled with the spirit of battle, were 
early deified as gods, their descendants accepted as demi-gods were founders 
of reigning dynasties, and naturally sought protection by surrounding their 
origin with the supernatural. Transformations are frequent in the mythology 
of all nations, for religion, in whatever stage of its development, ever remains 
a grand, progressive, moral science. Many ancient forms of pagan worship 
glided silently into even Christian rites, when martyrs canonized as saints, 
noiselessly replaced the divinities of former systems. 
As most early gods were ancient heroes deified, their worship was a nat- 
